Hawaii Vacation, Day 7!!: Sunday, March 6th

Sunday morning I couldn't sleep any later than 6 a.m. so I got up, took a shower, and attempted to relax on our balcony to eat breakfast and do my devotions but Honolulu is a city so...very loud and busy early in the morning. The hotel across the street did some kind of buffet breakfast around their pool every morning with live ukulele music and a guy singing Hawaiian songs, which would have been cool had it not been so early in the morning or had I not been attempting to read my Bible:) Also, the birds in Honolulu are used to people feeding them so eating a piece of bread with peanut butter (yea, peanut butter!) on our balcony was out of the question- a couple birds hopped right next to me on our little end table- no fear! So I retired back into our room to eat and read and Jesse and I were out the door by 8 a.m. to rent our car from Hertz for the day (we just rented a car for one day in Honolulu because parking in a city is a pain and expensive). We ended up with a gray Nissan of some sort (can't remember the model).

Our first stop for the day was Hanauma Bay and it was AWESOME!!! A little expensive for how long we were actually there, but still awesome ($1 for parking, $15 for admission for two, and $12.50 for one set of snorkeling gear to share). We were there from 9:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. so that translated into an hour of actual snorkeling time by the time we got changed into our suits, watched the 15 minute educational video you have to watch to enter (mainly telling us, "DO NOT touch the corral!"), walked down the steep path to the bay, waited in the snorkeling gear rental line, sat down on the beach, snorkeled, returned the gear, walked back up the path, and got changed back into our clothes. BUT like I already mentioned, it was still worth it and lots of fun!

Here's Jesse after we got settled on our towels on the beach. Check out that amazing view behind him! Neither Jesse or I had ever snorkeled before so we sat a few minutes watching others do it before either of us ventured out to try it ourselves.

Another beach shot of Hanauma Bay.

There I am snorkeling!

We didn't buy an underwater camera so I thought I'd include the two fish Jesse and I saw while snorkeling. The above fish is called a Convict Tang and there were hundreds of these in Hanauma Bay. The Bay's website says, "They stick to oxygen-enriched areas because of the algae growth and travel in small schools and stick close together."

This is a Milletseed Butterfly fish. I only saw one of these and it seemed a lot bigger than the Convict Tangs. I know Jesse saw at least one, too. The Bay's website says, "This particular type of butterfly fish is only seen in Hawaii."

Getting ready to go in a second time! The hardest part about snorkeling for me was not being able to breath through my nose. After I remembered to breath through my mouth the whole time, it was much easier:)

A few shots of Hanauma Bay from the path leading back up to the parking lot- so beautiful!!

From Hanauma Bay, we drove to Pearl Harbor and arrived there around 1 p.m. We got our tickets to take the ferry to the Arizona Memorial at 2 p.m. and then walked around the grounds.

Here's the Arizona Memorial. It was an amazing experience to watch the video about Pearl Harbor before boarding the ferry and then ride on the ferry and walk through the memorial in silence. What happened all those years ago is hard to wrap my mind around.

I love this picture of our flag. I took it looking up from inside the memorial.

You can see some of the Arizona under the water here.

From Pearl Harbor, we drove to the Dole Plantation and had lots of fun. We walked around their huge gift shop and then watched a demonstration of how to cut a pineapple the correct way- and we got to sample the fresh pineapples- delicious! Then we bought tickets for the 4:30 p.m. train ride on their Pineapple Express (Corban would have loved it!)

Here's a shot from the train of some pineapples!

I thought it was cool how red the soil was- because the ground is volcanic.

After our train ride, we bought some pineapple ice cream- SOOOOOOO GOOD- and bought a few gifts in the gift shop before they closed. Then we drove 15 minutes to the North Shore.

The North Shore, complete with lots of surfers!

Here's one of the surfer dudes.

After relaxing on the beach for a while, we changed into some nicer clothes (in a bathroom I will rate as the 3rd most disgusting bathroom I've ever been in!) and drove to Buca di Beppo Honolulu for a fun dinner. Then we returned the rental car and headed back to our room to relax after our busy day:)